Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a design support device for supporting product design by use of a computer, the Internet or the like.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as a technique for managing a design document or a design process, there is one that automatically extracts, at the time of design change, an item of the design document to be changed from a database by keyword search, and supports this change to be made with no omissions (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid open No. 2007-41841, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1).
Also, conventionally, as a technique for managing a design document or a design process, there is one that sets a design process of a product combining existing devices, based on the information on design data that is to be used to design a product or a database recording function information of a device for configuring a product, (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid open No. 2008-134840, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2).
To meet various product needs of recent years from clients, the procedure for designing a product is made ever more complicated. Also, due to the global expansion of companies, not only manufacturing but also designing is being performed at overseas based factories, and designers at several locations sometimes handle the designing of one product.
Generally, to improve a design process, visualization and analysis of a current design process are first considered effective. A design process clarifies the steps at the time of designing of a product. Here, a document created in the process of design, such as a drawing or a specification, is taken as a deliverable, and a collection of steps for creating one deliverable is defined as a task.
That is, a design process is a collection of successive tasks. At the time of creating a deliverable, a designer describes the shape or the performance of a product that he/she has devised in a drawing or a design document, and this is stored as design data. Also, among successive tasks, a task other than the first task is often for creating a new deliverable based on the deliverable created in the immediately preceding task. Accordingly, to visualize a design process, it is important to break down the design process into tasks, and to grasp the order of the tasks and the deliverables to be created.
Until now, visualization of a design process was possible by carrying out hearing from specific designers handling a target product at one location. However, if a design process is complex, and there are several designers involved, grasping of the design process by hearing becomes a burdensome work and is difficult.
Moreover, considering that the design locations are spread, it is not possible to frequently carry out hearing from all the designers involved in the product, and visualization of the design process solely by hearing would take a long time.
As a conventional technique for managing a design document or a design process, Patent Document 1 discloses a support technique for automatically extracting, at the time of design change, an item of the design document to be changed from a database by keyword search, and for making the change with no omissions. Also, Patent Document 2 discloses a technique for setting a design process of a product combining existing devices, based on the information on design data that is to be used to design a product or a database recording function information of a device for configuring a product.
According to Patent Document 1, keyword search is performed in a database accumulating design documents, and an item that is related to a design process and that is to be managed is extracted. However, there is not enough information for visualization of a design process, such as by what process a document was created and the relationship between the preceding or following process. Accordingly, visualization of a design process is difficult with this conventional technique.
Also, according to Patent Document 2, a design process of a new product is set by referring to data used in designing a product designing of which is already complete and a database recording the function information of the product. However, since the design data related to an existing product is used, this cannot cope with setting of a design process of a product which had never been designed up to then.
Accordingly, enabling easy visualization of a current design process which is to be the base for improving a design process becomes an issue.